Eric Klos
Respiratory Distress, the Weather and the ...

When, where, under what conditions, and how often do flare-ups occur? Well, when it comes to the impacts of weather and environmental exposures, “we don’t know, what we don’t know.” With the advent of big data, AI, mobile technology and wearable sensors, answering questions with empirical evidence of the when, where and under what conditions respiratory patients have flare-ups is within reach.

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A Mission Uncovered, A Passion Discovered – ...

When I started this journey, it began as an exploration of environmental factors as a determinant of health. I perceived that the medical community and society at large had long neglected them as a determinant of health .But, when I was exposed to the tragic outcomes of potentially preventable asthma attacks, it provided me a mission, a vision, and inspired passion to ensure that even one life breathes easier.

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Preventable tragedies: It’s time to tackle ...

Unfortunately, asthma tragedies are occurring every day in the US and around the world. This story resonated with me with such power that it has motivated along this journey. We can do better than this! In fact, DailyBreath is aimed at helping asthma sufferers pinpoint daily the when, where, and what of THEIR asthma. Perhaps, we can prevent even one asthma tragedy by helping them become weather informed, location aware, and health prepared.

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'That One Life Has Breathed Easier'

DailyBreath is about patient empowerment. The patient will be empowered to limit their suffering, whether it’s in the form of consistent allergy symptoms or in the case of asthma, attacks that are extremely burdensome, and often result in emergencies. We need to do all that we can to limit suffering. Quoting Emerson, “….that one life has breathed easier.” This is how we’ll define success with DailyBreath.

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My Lightbulb Moment

Environmental factors as a determinant of health have been long neglected by the medical community. We focus our time and money on medical care when efforts to address other factors like genetics, individual behavior, social, and the physical environment may have the benefit of reducing the need for costly medical care.

Insights

Personalizing Public Health

Personalizing Public Health - Crowdsourcing Environmental Insights - Better Asthma Outcomes

Last week was National Public Health Week, so it is fitting that we are launching this week the go-to-market version of DailyBreath, which aims to ‘personalize’ public health, following several prototypes and MVP’s that provided customer validation and valuable insights.  DailyBreath introduces the innovation of ‘exposure’ (weather, allergens, and irritants, including air pollution) contact tracing for the public good. Tracking the environmental factors associated with an asthma patient’s condition based on their location allows them to focus on adjusting behavior and preventing the most severe and costly outcomes.

To date weather and environmental exposure information, a matter of public health is distributed in a broadcast model and treats a population within a common zip code as if they are all impacted in the same way no matter where within that zip code they are located.  However, weather, and environmental exposures are more granular and the confluence of them, not each exposure in isolation, impacts us individually.  We measure exposures separately, but we experience symptoms based on this confluence.

Hyper-local geo-location is now available via our phones.  With the advent of proliferating fixed sensors and wearables, the trend is towards capturing even more granular or hyper-local data related to weather and environmental exposures.  Tracking individual susceptibility to weather and environmental exposures in a person’s immediate environment is within reach. 

Your experience with asthma is personal, but the exposures you experience are local and may also impact others.  So, what if you were able to contribute your symptom (flare-up) data to a map where symptoms are crowdsourced, a way for all nearby members within the DailyBreath community to understand risk in the context of where they may be going. 

DailyBreath is ‘personalizing public health’.  We are collecting patient-generated data to support a shared asthma journey while supporting the community in achieving improved public health.  As pollution is local, we want to empower communities to know where populations at risk are vulnerable to exposures so they can take action to improve overall air quality.

Our location is extremely important in our individual health and wellness and yet we are not ‘monitoring to manage’ the weather and environment factors daily in relationship to our health.  It is now time to leverage weather and environmental data to deliver personalized environmental insights for better asthma outcomes.  It is time for DailyBreath.

Authored by Eric Klos, CEO and Founder, DailyBreath, a cloud based SAAS company delivering personalized environmental insights for better asthma outcomes.  DailyBreath is a mobile app that helps those with asthma pinpoint THEIR triggers.

Text ‘DB4CAST’ to 72345 to download DailyBreath to your smartphone (iOS or Android).